Ephraim Hardcastle
THE King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired a 41-gun salute for the Queen’s birthday yesterday – watched by the monarch at Windsor by video link. I hear that one plan being discussed is to merge the Troop – around 90 horses and 150 men – with the Household Cavalry. My source says: ‘The Troop was based in St John’s Wood. In 2012, they were moved out to Woolwich and the St John’s Wood barracks were sold off to a property developer for £250million. The Household Cavalry might be moved to join the Troop at the Woolwich barracks, allowing the MoD to sell off the Knightsbridge barracks. HM has fought off such plans but the knaves may finally trump the Queen.’
DAVID Cameron’s lack-lustre campaign for re-election attracts the bilious attention of retired Tory warhorse Lord Tebbit, who compares the PM unfavourably with ‘Churchill, Attlee, Bevin – real men with real depths of experience’, adding: ‘He doesn’t have that hinterland of experience any more than Mr Miliband.’ But always-stimulating Norman has a reputation for outspoken attacks on colleagues – while simultaneously demanding that they ‘stop rocking the boat’.
THE new £50million Edward M Kennedy Institute in Boston, dedicated to the youngest brother of President John F Kennedy, erases from history Mary Jo Kopechne, pictured, the angelic 28-yearold campaign worker drowned when the boozy senator drove their car into a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, in July 1969. He fled the scene, leaving Mary Jo trapped under water, and didn’t report the incident for more than ten hours. President Obama and Vice President Biden – Democrats like Kennedy – attended the opening of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, described as ‘a shimmering, hi-tech testament to the Senate, as well as Kennedy’s legacy’.
SHOULD Prince William remain closeted with expectant wife Kate at the Lindo Wing, St Mary’s Hospital, on Saturday, the Princess Royal is on standby to take his place alongside the Queen at the Cenotaph for the Gallipoli Service. Afterwards, the plan is for Anne to be helicoptered to a rugby match in Milton Keynes – as she was last month when she left the Afghanistan service at St Paul’s for the Cheltenham races.
LABOUR windbag Lord Prescott tweets: ‘You know you’re desperate when you have to wheel out John Major, the weakest one-term PM in history, as your attack sheep.’ Weakest one-term prime minister? In 1992, Major won a general election – unlike Prescott’s colleague, Gordon Brown. Major piled up 14million votes, a record in British electoral history.
ATTENTION-seeking BBC economics editor Robert Peston sends a message on Twitter to Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon, saying: ‘My inbox is heaving with emails from people in other parts of the UK asking how they can vote SNP.’ Somewhat creepy, surely.